Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1698938721198.pdf (Trinidad and Tobago)
I N T E R N A TI ON AL AN TI - CO R R U P TI ON DA Y “ ”   A message from Mr. Justice Melville Baird (Ret.)

Chairman, Integrity Commission Once again Trinidad and Tobago joins the international community in the observance of International Anti-Corruption Day.
In 2003 the General Assembly of the United Nations designated December 9, as International Anti-Corruption Day for the purpose, among other things, of raising awareness throughout the international community of the harmful nature of corruption and the need for its destruction.

With this in mind, my message today, targeting the ills and pitfalls of corruption, the need for combating corruption and the strategies for such combat, is in the same vein as my message of 2018.
In corruption we face an opponent that is at once formidable and thorough.

This we must recognize and interiorize before we can go on to consider the strategies and methods we should adopt to neutralize it.

Operating in the main, with clandestinity, corruption persists like a current just below the surface of society, invading all strata of society with its tendrils.
I reiterate my call to fellow Trinidadians and Tobagonians to become sensitized to the dangers to which our nation is exposed by the corruption that is assailing it on all sides and to be conscious of the significant harm to the economy that corruption could occasion – it is now indisputable that corruption can retard the economic development of a country.

I repeat my exhortation to the citizenry to cultivate a deeper sense of civic mindedness and avoid committing petty infractions of the law.
Uncontained and unbridled, such irresponsible conduct could conduce to greater infractions and the next door neighbour to such a rebellious attitude is, without question, corruption.

They could also confront corruption at street level by, for example, refusing to pay money to officials to perform functions for which those officials are already being paid a salary to perform.

We must utterly resist, on all fronts, the venality of unscrupulous officials.
In the campaign against corruption and in the promotion of integrity and honesty, I enlisted the assistance of the future Trinidad and Tobago – the children and young people of the nation.

“Meh remember granny does say: Honesty goes ah long way: So ‘cause we small and looking up: De community better step up.” These are not the words of a secondary school student; these are not even the words of a primary school student.
These are the words of a four-year old early childhood care and education child and that child was speaking with fiery sincerity.

The occasion was the National Speech Band Competition Finals in September hosted in Tobago by the Integrity Commission in partnership with the Ministry of Education and the Tobago House of Assembly; the competition was open to secondary, primary and early childhood and education schools throughout Trinidad and Tobago.
Their performances were based on the concept of integrity and honesty.

The experience of hearing these school children speak with lucid authority and unswerving conviction on integrity and honesty was for me, one of those epoch defining moments and the thought that these school children will ultimately be part of the society of the future Trinidad and Tobago filled me, to an eminent degree, with hope and encouragement for the future moral standing of our country.
By their display of fluency in the basic vocabulary of integrity and honesty, these children have carved for themselves a niche in the collective voice of the nation on integrity and honesty.

Their emblem is truth.

And if one speaks the truth, one, sooner or later would be found out.

This four-year old in a cry from the heart, challenged the adult members of society to be exemplars of moral probity.
They were young, he stated, and with the words of granny before them that honesty went a long way, they were looking to the adults for the necessary example.

So the adults had better “step up”.

My sentiments exactly.

And in my anti-corruption message last year I said, and will say again, that there is nothing so easy to follow as a bad example.
And so today, International Anti-Corruption Day, I urge the adult members of our society, primarily for the sake of our children and young people, to develop an abiding sense of human responsibility, to strive to be paragons of rectitude and to be ever conscious of the fact that our children and young people, sorely in need of exemplars, are looking to the adults for guidance, and inspiration.

In keeping with the motto of the Integrity Commission they should be motivated to “Do the Right Thing Always”.
As we continue to prosecute the war against corruption, I was positively heartened by recent pronouncements that funding would be provided for services to amend the Integrity in Public Life Act.

These amendments were submitted to Cabinet by the Integrity Commission in 2018 and they are designed to fortify the Integrity in Public Life Act and to broaden its scope; the result would be more arrows in our quiver as we take the fight to corruption.
Buoyed by these assurances and by the declared assent of so many of our young people to integrity and honesty, I will press on and as I do so I will adapt the words of Martin Luther King Jr. to my situation: “Take the first step….

you don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” I wish the people of Trinidad and Tobago a very reflective International Anti-Corruption Day.

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